Ah, Google. Always looking out for us. Have you ever noticed that when you perform an image search on Google, there’s a “SafeSearch” option? It can be strict, moderate, or off altogether, and this will affect the types of images that appear in your search results. Depending on what you’re searching for, this actually isn’t a bad idea. It can keep undesirable images from appearing when you’re searching for medical or anatomical information, for example, which is great when you’re helping your kids with their biology homework. And the fact that Google gives you the power to control the level of restriction is nice, too. So why wouldn’t that same power extend to all Google products? It doesn’t. Apparently, if you’re a Nexus One owner, you’re not allowed to swear at it.
Ok, not at it, but into it. The Nexus One has a built in voice-to-text feature. This is great for people who aren’t good with typing on a miniature touchscreen keyboard, or who just don’t have the time to type out a text message they need to send right away. I would imagine this would also be a very helpful feature for those with impaired vision who may find it difficult to navigate the keyboard.
This is all well and good until you try to swear while using this feature. Rather than transcribing your chosen expletive, the Nexus One will display a series of hash marks, not to be confused with hashtags used on Twitter, which can actually be fun and helpful. No, these are just placeholders that show you did say a word there, but the Nexus One just isn’t going to use that kind of language, thankyouverymuch. Now you go wash your mouth out with soap. I hear Palmolive has a nice, piquant, after-dinner flavor.
When Reuters asked Google about it, a spokeswoman said, “We filter potentially offensive or inappropriate results because we want to avoid situations whereby we might misrecognize a spoken query and return profanity when, in fact, the user said something completely innocent.”
I can see that being a valid reason to build that feature into the software. The last thing you want is to say something completely innocent in a text, have it transcribed mistakenly as a curse word, and end up swearing at your boss unintentionally. Or your spouse. Or your child. That’s just asking for all kinds of trouble. Although I bet Alec Baldwin wishes he could blame a certain voicemail on a software issue like this.
On the other hand, why not give people the option to turn that feature off? I know people who use swear words as nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and even adverbs, meant to modify their speech, and not to be taken offensively. It’s just the way they speak. Sure, it’s not for everyone, and some may find it offensive, but is it really up to Google to determine whether someone can use curse words in their text messages?
In addition, did Google, an American company based in California, take into account that some people may have accents, and a valid word may somehow sound like a swear word? Or what about people from other countries who have, by American standards, unusual names? I’ve seen foreign names that can induce juvenile giggles because of their similar appearance to and pronunciation like English curses.
What I also want to know is, why just boring old hash marks? If Google was going to censor curse words, couldn’t they have made it a little more fun by using a series of random characters the way they do in %&@$ing comic books?
I wonder, though, if Google is aware of a cruel twist of irony. Author Neil Gaiman found out about this censoring issue, and decided to test it out, going through just about every name in the book to see if the Nexus One would catch them all. It did. Either someone at Google has a very interesting and strange job, and thought of everything, or Neil just wasn’t creative enough, which we know is just impossible. What he did find, though—and don’t ask me what motivated him to try this—was that if you follow the swear word immediately with “dot com,” the Nexus One will transcribe the swear word. I wonder what kind of rank those babies would get on Google.
Share this Post
Subscribe and Follow
Subscribe to the Going Cellular feed via RSS and follow Going Cellular on Twitter!
{ 1 trackback }
{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
By ’someone’, I hope you mean the great and powerful Neil Gaiman!
Why not credit the rather famous author who discovered the trick you mention at the end?
It was Neil Gaiman, all fame and fortune to him, who discovered it.
See here: http://twitter.com/neilhimself
Would that “someone” be neilhimself? Deserves a credit surely?
That person he was following on twitter was @neilhimself, otherwise known as writer Neil Gaimen, for those who were curious.
Said person who found the “dot com” loop hole was Neil Gaiman (:
“I discovered this accidentally, like penicillin:If you follow them by saying “dot com” the Nexus1 is happy to transcribe your spoken swears.” – twitter.com/neilhimself
Er, my apologies. She. Fingers got ahead of brain.
“Someone I follow on Twitter” – Give credit where credit is due, please.
You should give Neil Gaiman the credit he deserves for his discovery if you are going to mention him. He’s not just “some guy on Twitter”, he’s a well-known author and it seems like you are ripping him off by not at least mentioning his name so the people who benefit from this discovery can thank the right person.
The “dot.com” idea was actually first tweeted by the author Neil Gaiman.
Neil Gaiman is the discoverer of the dot com workaround, in my timeline
I believe that was @neilhimself that did the little experiment.
You know, I think Mr. Gaiman would have liked credit for finding that out. lol. I follow him as well, and now I can send hilarious looking, profane messages.
Ok, can I just say that I had no idea how completely awesome our readers are, and that they would not only recognize the source of the Google phone/dot com swearing experiment, but would also be fans of the wonderful Neil Gaiman! My sincerest apologies, readers, and especially Mr. Gaiman. I have credited the source and linked to the Twitter status where he shared this information. Thanks so much to everyone who chimed in. You guys rock!
Um, you may not realize this, but the person who discovered the dot.com workaround is actually…
heh. I’m so tempted. But I know for every 2 people who get it, there’d be 1 who didn’t… Hilarious that out of 14 comments, 13 of them are “by the way, it was Neil Gaiman,” and the other one was a correction TO a “by the way, it was NG” comment.
Does seem ridiculous to have a censor feature locked in. Built in – fine, for the reasons they mentioned. Locked in? No.
In an ideal world: Censor feature is set as default-on, easily adjustable by user. There’s also an option for an alert any time a message includes a “naughty word,” to avoid the boss-ward slips, BUT this alert feature can also be turned off by the user. Finally, individual contacts can be designated as “never censor” – so if I’m sending a text to a friend, it neither censors me nor reminds me that I used Lanugage, even if the alert option IS on.
They probably already have that worked out, and are just waiting a year or two so everyone will clamor to pay a couple hundred bucks for the “new and improved model…”
Oops. Should be “clamor to pay another couple hundred bucks” etc.
Neil Gaiman sucks. He is full of himself and his writing isn’t that great. He writes comic books! The people who do the pictures are the real artists! They make things look like they move when they actually aren’t! Then Mr. Gaiman comes in, slaps down some douchey one liners and an americanized anime ripoff plot and doesnt even credit the real artists on the cover of his book.
that being said, he DID come up with a way to bypass the profanity filter on the nexus one! How awesome! A true hacker through and through!
i’ll bet one of those comments was actually him, bitching about not getting enough credit.
Actually, Neil Gaiman has also written several novels, some of which have been made into pretty good movies and TV series.
As far as one of the comments being from him, well, I would have no way of knowing. But he did tweet about not getting credit. ;-)
Clearly, Tim, you don’t know anyone who writes comics. Those illustrators don’t have a job unless Gaiman writes the comic in the first place. They go by his story.
false. The only thing that makes comic books a true art form is the way the artists create the illusion of true movement on pages. Bottom line: neil gaiman is a douchebag who needs to get off his computer.
Alan moore puts his artists’ names on his books. Alan moore > Neil gaiman.
Yay credit!
Where’s the relevance ranking button? Speaking of profanity, I smell someone smearing shit around and about for (T) his (I) own (M) amusement. There’s nothing quite like reading a string of comments where a dozen have been downranked into oblivion and marked as such – to me, it’s a pleasant reminder that democracy is capable of cleaning up after failures of good sense and common decency.
Alas, it’s no use feeding the trolls. No use answering them. They’re trolls, a not so pleasant reminder of why to wear seatbelts when driving, etc.
Have faith – in the grand scheme of things, trolls are a minor evils – Cthulu 2012!
I’ve only read one of Neil Gaiman’s books, and it was nonfiction, so I can’t say anything about his novels or comic books, but I loved him in Monkey Shines.